NCRI: Iran Regime's Stepping up Terror Threat to West

Written by Amir Taghati on 23 January 2019.

By Amir Taghati

The Iranian Regime’s “terrorist threat and terror games” in Europe and the US have “rapidly intensified” in the past year as the mullahs have stepped up their elimination campaign against their opponents, according to Iranian opposition coalition the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).

The pro-regime-change faction has long advised that Iran is responsible for state-sponsored terrorism worldwide, something that the US administration has also begun to realise, but now the fear is that there are yet more Iranian-sponsored terror attacks headed for the West.

The NCRI’s president-elect Maryam Rajavi argued that the US and EU needed to adopt a firm policy against the mullahs, which should include “blacklisting” of the Ministry of Intelligence and the Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and expelling their intelligence agents

Rajavi said: “The mullahs must understand that their terrorist activities will have serious consequences and that Europe will not tolerate such malign activities as it is determined to fight against terrorism in all forms.”

Her comments come shortly after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned the Davos World Economic Forum on Tuesday about the "very real" threat posed by Iran.

Previous Iranian attacks

The NCRI has highlighted a series of foiled terrorist attacks and terror-related arrests throughout 2018 to show how dangerous Iran is.

In March, two Iranian agents posing as journalists were arrested by Albanian authorities for terrorist activities after a truck loaded with explosives was set to attack the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) headquarters in Tirana, where 3,000 refugees are based.

Then, in early June, the Netherlands expelled two Iranian diplomats for an attack on an Iranian opposition leader. On June 30, European authorities foiled a bomb attack against an NCRI rally in Paris, which was attended by over 100,000 people and an Iranian diplomat stationed in Vienna was arrested in Germany for plotting the attack and supplying the explosive.

While in August, the US announced the arrest of two Iranian Intelligence Ministry agents, Ahmadreza Mohammadi Doostdar and Majid Ghorbani, who was “spying on” and “plotting against” the NCRI and MEK. Then, in October, an Iranian-Norwegian citizen was arrested in Denmark for a failed attack on an Iranian opponent.

Finally, on January 8, 2019, the EU decided to add the Iranian intelligence agency and its director general Saeid Hashemi Moghadam to its terror list in response to some of these attacks. This move welcomed by Danish Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen, who called it "a huge victory".

He said: "No other country's intelligence services are on the terror list. So it's a very clear signal we send to Iran today."

Elham Zanjani and Elahe Arj from the Women’s Committee of the NCRI said: “While all signals are calling for an alert with the rise of the mullah’s state terrorism, the decision of European governments is a positive step to counter these, but more needs to be done. For years, western governments had adopted the policy of appeasement of the mullahs but the time is over for the policy of appeasement.”